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So I am sitting in my home this morning minding my own business, reading the Dallas Morning News, and I get clotheslined by a small note in the GuideLive section. There it is at the top of page 5G…

Birthdays….Barbara Eden, 72.

Are you kidding me? Jeannie is 72? How old do I feel today! I was twelve when I Dream of Jeannie appeared in stunning black and white on our Sylvania TV. I don’t like to brag but our television featured the “halo light” innovation. The halo light was a fluorescent light which surrounded the picture tube in order to provide, well, I have no idea why it was there but we had one and no one else on our block did! A little research time did reveal the answer to the mystery of the halo light. The website tvlamps.net  gave me my answer.

TV lamps originated from a perceived need to diffuse the contrast between the brightness of the television screen and the comparative darkness of the surrounding environment. Concerns of permanent eye damage were taken quite seriously, and industry stepped up to tackle this modern problem. The solution would come in the form of ambient (surrounding) light, heralded as the savior of eyes everywhere. And so it went, as the 1950s saw the advent of the Sylvania Halo Light television. This nifty bit of ingenuity consisted of a fluorescent bulb that cast a “halo” of light around the screen, surrounding the picture with ambient light. Sounding somehow familiar, this technology was called “Surround Lighting”. The Halo Light ads, usually featuring a lovely lass in a golden dress, made it clear that this new discovery was a must-have: “You’ll see the difference instantly! Pictures framed in exciting HALOLIGHT appear larger, sharper and clearer!”

Courtesy www.tvlamps.net

So the Halolight was the TV version of parental obsession with eyesight in the 60’s. That was why Ralphie couldn’t have a Red Ryder BB Gun in A Christmas Story.  The dreaded parental trump card of “you’ll put your eye out” haunted the hero of that Christmas classic. I am not sure that the Halolight delivered on its’ promises to save our vision but I do remember sitting in the mysterious aura of its’ fluorescent glow watching Barbara Eden as Jeannie. The show debuted in 1965 with astronaut Tony Nelson’s (played by Larry Hagman) one man space capsule landing on a deserted island. There he finds the genie bottle (which was actually a 1964 Jim Beam whiskey decanter) and out comes Jeannie after being imprisoned in that whiskey bottle for years (sounds like a country song). The madcap hijinks (officially endorsed entertainment descriptive words) continued for five seasons.

    Courtesy of www.photobucket.com

I felt nostalgic and very, very old when I read that Barbara Eden is 72. I felt even older when one website described her as a “retrobabe”. This is the woman that I had an adolescent crush for in 1965. I also remember that the show was controversial in the mid-60’s because of Jeannie’s costume. The original costume showed a glimpse of her navel and that caused an uproar among parents. Apparently it was okay for a single woman to wear a harem suit and live with a single man but it wasn’t okay to show her navel. Ahhh yes…the confused mores of the sixties. But the thing I remember other than the harem costume was Jeannie’s subservient devotion to Major Nelson. She called him “master” and lived to do his every bidding. I used to dream…wouldn’t it be great to have a relationship like that?

Fast forward forty-one years and my answer is now a resounding no. How my views on relationships have changed. When I shifted from I Dream of Jeannie to I Dream of Joni my ideas about what love looks like changed. I did somehow marry a beautiful woman. But I thank God that Joni has not been a subservient wife who does my every bidding. She has loved me when I was unlovable. At times I am sure it was only faith and commitment from that fateful day in 1976 that allowed her to love me. Because of that commitment she loves me enough to challenge me. No one (other than Jesus) knows me better than Joni. And the fact that both of them still love me is a miracle of grace that astounds me even as I ponder it.

Like nearly every Christian couple in the 70’s we had 1 Corinthians 13 read at our wedding (we did pass on the Carpenter’s We’ve Only Just Begun). We did not, tragically, pass on the baby blue “Dumb and Dumber” tuxes that were popular then. But I embarrassingly digress. Most of us have heard and read the “love chapter” so many times that we are almost desensitized to the power of Paul’s words written to the church at Corinth. That church had, in today’s parlance, issues. One of their big issues was sexual immorality. So Paul was defining what Christian love looks like in relationship. Slow down, pour another cup of coffee (aka Chrisitan speed) and ponder each word.

     Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

    Love will last forever, but prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will all disappear. Now we know only a little, and even the gift of prophecy reveals little! But when the end comes, these special gifts will all disappear.

     It’s like this: When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

     There are three things that will endure–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love.  NLT

I love my bride more today than I did thirty years ago. When I was a child I dreamed of Jeannie. Now I am so thankful that I am slowly, agonizingly putting away childish things and learning how to really love my wife. Emphasis on slowly. Now I dream of spending many more years with Joni. That is not guaranteed. But I believe that I will have that privilege. I approach the rest of our years together with faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a brake company in the Dallas area that runs radio commercials featuring a very concerned and extraordinarily helpful employee explaining why a female caller needs to get her car in right away to save money and to be sure she is safe. They are even willing to stay later to make sure her car is safe. Impressed, she asks the question, “why do you do it?” And then the jingle singers let us know why. Because they really do care. That ad is for Just Brakes and I have no reason to doubt that they really do care. Someone asked me the other day a similar question about my almost daily blogs. “Why do you write a blog everyday?” The tone was incredulous. Why do you do it? Since I don’t have jingle singers I will have to write out my answer to a question that proved more complex than it seemed at first blush.

I describe blogging as ego journaling. There are a few dedicated and beleaguered readers of these humble ramblings that regularly visit to be occasionally blessed or mildly entertained. And I have to admit that I love that feedback and affirmation. But that is not enough of a reason to get up every morning and spend the time required to write daily posts to this blog.

A practical reason is that blogging has driven book sales a bit. Visitors to the Crosswalk.com blog often bounce over to the mother ship (the cleverly named daveburchett.com) and they will sometimes take a chance on buying one of my books. But that has not proven lucrative enough to justify the time spent.

I believe the real reason I have become so committed to these daily ramblings is purely selfish. The very public nature of blogging forces me to evaluate myself as a follower of Christ everyday I write. I would be a hypocrite of record proportions if I wrote about Jesus and never turned that focus on my own life. I rather like the forced accountability of being on the record. Several irate readers roundly criticized me when I called a Christian leader to task for behavior that reflected poorly on the name of Jesus. “How would you like to have people judging you like that?”,  several wrote smugly as if they had played the trump card of logic. My answer is I would like that very much. If my behavior in any way damages the name of Jesus I want to be accountable. I need to be accountable. If I do damage I want to have people who love me enough to tell me I am going astray. Very few people are looking for perfect, sinless Christians. But I have found a lot of people who are looking for authentic followers of Jesus. They are desperately looking for Christians who love others, admit their mistakes, accept the mistakes of others, are hopeful when hope isn’t in abundance, and joyful when circumstances don’t merit that response. I have often said that one authentic Christian can offset dozens, and maybe hundreds, of bad Christians. That is want I want to be as I grow in my faith. An authentic follower of Jesus. Honest about my many failures. Quick to repent and repair when I do fail. Grateful for every blessing and good thing that comes my way. Trusting of a God who has proved loving and faithful when bad things come along. I am not there yet.

The blogging helps me to daily examine how I am doing in that pursuit. Just like x-rays at various stages provide a basis to examine the progress of healing I can examine earlier posts to see how I am growing or regressing in my journey with Jesus. And that may be the main reason I blog. I can look back over the archives and see how God is working in my life. That is why I would encourage every reader of these humble ramblings to consider journaling (if you are modest) or blogging (if you are like me and my buddy Ray Pritchard). I look back in amazement at how the Holy Spirit was working in my heart before Joni was diagnosed with cancer. I had written a number of posts about troubles. For example, I wrote about life being hazardous and our faith does not guarantee no trouble will come our way. At the time I had no idea why that topic was on my radar. Now I realized how God was preparing me for the trial that was just over the horizon. I have followed how God has worked in our lives from Diagnosis Day to this point in the cancer journey. And I can read and be reminded how He has been faithful over and over in this trial.

Why do I blog? I am grateful that some of you apparently enjoy these daily posts. But I blog because it reminds me of how God is moving in the life of one Bad Christian.

This is a dangerous post. I must begin with a disclaimer that I have now lived in Texas for 26 years. I love Texas and the people of the Lone Star state. Please remember that disclaimer as I confess that I understand what General  Philip Henry Sheridan said about Texas after the Civil War. Sheridan remarked that “if I owned Hell and Texas I would rent out Texas and live in Hell”. Because he criticized Texas and was also a Yankee (the Texas version of a Samaritan) I am pretty sure that most Texans are sure he is now residing in Hell. But let us extend a moment of grace and consider that perhaps Sheridan offered his comments during the month of August. I suspect that in pre A/C days I might have said the same thing. This summer has been miserable in North Texas. August in Texas is our payback for mocking our Northern friends during February.

The culprit for our miserable summer has been a high pressure dome that has camped over Texas since June. I am not a meteorologist, I don’t play one on TV, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but here is what I understand about this phenomenon. This high pressure dome just sits there defiantly (okay…it may not have personality but it sure seems vengeful) and whenever a cooling front or storm approaches those cooling temps bounce off and are sent to a less deserving state. Every night I watch the weather with naive hope. I observe these fronts floating toward Texas from Canada and bringing the hope of tantalizingly cooler air only to see this high pressure dome reject that relief. And we stay miserable. Texans (and adopted Texans) know that eventually this dome will be broken up and cooler weather will arrive. But that may require a tropical disturbance to change the pattern.

How does this relate to a Bad Christian? One of things that God is teaching me is that I allow similar spiritual “high pressure domes” to settle over areas of my life. The “high pressure dome” of pride forces a gentle front of humility and reconciliation to bounce tragically away. The net result is the same. I stay miserable. It takes courage, maybe a little Holy Spirit disturbance, or perhaps a life storm to break up the high pressure dome that blocks the arrival of spiritual change. I find it fascinating that I desperately hope the weather high pressure dome will go away so I will not be physically miserable yet I ignore the stubborn spiritual patterns that make me even more miserable. I am indeed a fallen creature. I pray that I will stop allowing domes of sin to settle over my spiritual life patterns. I pray that I will break up any hindrance that blocks the refreshing of the Holy Spirit.

And just to make sure my fellow Texans are clear…I would rent out Hell and live in Texas. Even in August.

 

 

Busted! You always hope that your sins will fly under the radar. But you cannot hide forever. Yesterday I laughed out loud when I found a reference to my recent blog about Mel Gibson at anti-itch meditation. Blogger Jeff Weddle posted an excerpt from my blog and had this summation.

The guy is great with words (even though he puts an apostrophe in a possessive ‘its’) and makes excellent points.

While I appreciate the kind words about my writing his comments exposed a raw nerve. I can hide it no longer. I am tired of trying to hide my shame. I was apparently sick the day they covered punctuation. Yes, I admit it.
  
Deep breath.

I am a terrible punctuator. Okay…are you happy?

My weakness is exposed for the entire world to see with the daily blog. I have an editor to clean up after my punctuation mess when I write a book. So I am praying for God to raise up a punctuation proofer to email me and gently correct my punctuation sin after each post. There…I feel better that you know. And it is comforting to know that Jesus loves me despite my egregious use of possessive ‘its’. 

I am not sure what this means but, after praying for a punctuation accountibility partner, the name Jeff appeared on a burnt piece of toast this morning.  By the way, Jeff Weddle offers an email book at his site called “Deer Pants for the Water”. Looks interesting. 

Send an e-mail to jcweddle1 at juno.com for your copy.

Today I am announcing an immediate opening for the “Bad Christian Punctuation Laureate”. And just so you know, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So you’ll have that goin’ for you, which is nice. (Note to Legalistic Cyber Hall Monitors…that is a paraphrase from a  very funny movie. Yes, I also watch movies. That throwaway line does not reflect my actual beliefs about death). Applications for this prestigious punctuation post are now being processed at dave@daveburchett.com.

While I am cleansing my soul with confessions I might as well reveal another one. I am terrified of snakes. I can thank my earthly father for that one. Just the sight of a snake on television made him break out in a cold sweat and he passed that trait lovingly along to me. So I can assure you that I will not be viewing the new movie, Snakes on a Plane.  Plus good friend Kevin raised a very important question. “Shouldn’t it be Snakes IN a Plane?” Snakes ON a plane would just go flying off during take-off and ascent making for some very surprised homeowners in the flight path.

“Honey, it’s raining snakes.”
“You are going to the Betty Ford Center now!”

Since snakes are getting their fifteen minutes there have been a number of related articles about these creatures. The Week magazine had an excerpt from an article published at LiveScience. Anthropologist Lynne Isbell proposes that humans developed into intelligent, observant creatures with color vision and depth perception for one main reason – to avoid snakes. Her radical new theory purports that the development of primates was driven by an evolutionary arms race with snakes. In order to detect snakes at close distance, Isbell proposes that early primates developed better vision and bigger brains. And then, not to be outdone, about 60 million years ago the snakes met and decided to develop a new weapon, venom. Okay, that is not exactly how she said it but I like the mental picture of the snakes meeting down at the lodge and plotting their next move.
“The snakes upped the ante,” says Isbell, “and then the primates had to respond by developing even better vision.”
So my question is simple. As primates developed language, tools, reality television, and culture what were the snakes doing to counter? Did they jointly decide this evolutionary arms race was “just too hard?” Did they think that venom was their last ditch evolutionary effort? Are they resting for a few million years until some reptile comes up with a plan? (Insert politician joke here) Are they plotting something that will be unveiled in just another million years or so? (Note to both evolution and ID camps…this was just good natured fun. Step slowly away from the send button and turn off the ALL-CAPS!!! I already know I am an idiot. But thanks for caring)

Cornell evolutionary biologist Harry Greene told LiveScience that this theory could explain why the fear of snakes (ophidiphobia) is so deeply imbedded in humans. Or it could be that snakes are just creepy.

A quick rummage through Scripture found thirty-five verses referencing snakes. A disturbing reference was made by Jesus when He addressed the hypocritical tendencies of the Pharisees.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the Scriptures. So practice and obey whatever they say to you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush you with impossible religious demands and never lift a finger to help ease the burden.  Matthew 23: 1–4

During the chapter Jesus called them hypocrites, blind guides, and clean on the exterior but filthy inside. Later Jesus made the snake reference.

Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?

The anger of Jesus was directed at men who claimed to be lovers of God but did not live that way. And that hits a little too close to home. That concludes today’s confessions while I slither away for some self-reflection.

 

 

 

 

I opened the email box this morning and I was reminded that youngest son Brett fell straight down from the Burchett family tree. In his message was a link to a new  poster from a company called Despair, Inc. This group of lovable cynics parodies the motivational poster companies. Brett sent me this to start my day.

Of course I then spent thirty minutes that I will never get back looking at all of the “Demotivating” downers from this company. Would you like to join me in a half-empty tour of abject despair? Of course you would because you have nothing better to do (just getting you warmed up).

The first one fits nicely with my personal slogan that my ministry is to make other Christians feel superior.

Mistakes – It could be that the only purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

I thought the next one was really funny until I really started thinking about it. And I realized it is true.

Dysfunction – The only consistent feature of all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.

Hmmmm. At least I try to put the “fun” in dysfunction.

Some of the “demotivating” thoughts had real application to church. What pastor or church leader has not felt the truth of this poster?

Success – Some people dream of success, while other people live to crush those dreams.

If you have ever been clotheslined by committee or sacked by a deacon board blitz you can relate to the sad truth of that slogan.

The next poster warns us about the damage done by gossip, loose lips, and ungodly comments.

Teamwork – A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.

Guilty. And the truth is that we “flakes” really are not so harmless when we team up with others to start the snowball rolling.

The next message is funny but also a bit sad to me. It is sad because it reflects the spirit of so many people who are defeated by life and have no hope.

Doubt – In the battle between you and the world, bet on the world.

If the battle is between you and the world I would take that bet. I know that would be how a cynical and dysfunctional guy like me would view life apart from my faith. As a follower of Jesus I have hope in place of doubt. James talked about the things that the world brings at us in a very different way. He does not despair. James would have been immediately fired by Despair, Inc after he described troubles as an opportunity for joy.

Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.  James 1  NLT

That won’t sell a lot of “demotivating” posters but it does contain a lot of truth that Joni and I have experienced first hand in recent months. So many people tell me that they could not handle cancer the way that we have dealt with it. And I tell them they are wrong. I would have said exactly the same thing before we began this trial. But when you are a follower of Jesus you are not alone. He has given us strength and grace that is beyond my comprehension or ability to describe. I know that we are ready for anything because He is with us. God has proved faithful to us in this trial. If I am doing well in this journey there is no other explanation apart from Jesus. Later James talks about the results of such faith and endurance.

God blesses the people who patiently endure testing. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.  James 1 NLT

Sometimes in the battle I think we forget about that promise. Sometimes I wonder if we really believe it to be true? All of us visit despair now and then. With Jesus it can (and should be) a short trip.

   

Warning: This blog may attempt real or attempted humor. Any reader who has allergic reactions to sarcasm, cyncism, and irony should proceed at their own risk.

I subscribe to a magazine called The Week. It is an excellent weekly summary of news both useful and weird. Here is a sampling of the “news” from the most recent issue.

• The Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics announced the first pill to combat stupidity. The drug has been shown to improve the attentiveness and short-term memory of flies and mice.

First impressions. It will now be harder to swat flies and catch mice. Now flies will more likely notice you approaching with the swatter. And the mice will remember that cousin Mickey did not have a good result going for the free cheese buffet. As for human applications, I was excited at first about the prospects of the anti-stupid pill. But then I started thinking that stupid people are not going to see the need to take the pill. And it seems that if everyone takes the pill we are going to be slightly smarter but the ratios will remain the same. People smarter than me will still be smarter than me if we both take the anti-stupid pill. Good idea…but now I will use up all of my extra smarts trying to swat the more attentive flies and catch those now wary mice.

• A camper is suing the U.S. Government because he fell off a cliff while relieving himself during the night while camping at Mt. Hood National Park. The lawsuit says (and I am not making this up) that “while looking for a place to relieve himself the plaintiff walked off the unguarded and unprotected creek, falling 20 to 30 feet to the creek below.” The plaintiff, Jerry Mersereau, said the government should have known that campers might wander off the cliff, and he is demanding compensation for his “mental anguish”.

I would suggest the first expenditure if there is any cash award should be to buy a gross of the pills described above. The plaintiff walked off the “unguarded” creek? Was there supposed to be an attendant there handing out hand towels? “Watch your step sir. There is a 30 foot drop to the latrine.” Anyone who regularly observes the workings of government would not depend on Washington to watch over the safety of nocturnal nature calls. I guess the standard response is obvious…blame George Bush. I do agree that such a tumble would give me “mental anguish”. Except I might also describe it as “extreme embarrassment”.

The Week Magazine excerpted an interview with writer/filmmaker Woody Allen. The original piece ran in the Washington Post. In the interview Allen laments that celebrity status really has not made him all that happy.

• “But once you get up in years, like seventies, there’s nothing good about it. The dynamite women you see on the street, that world is gone to you. “You know, it’s inappropriate,” he mutters, as though he’s about to think better of discussing this. “One of the great pastimes of my life was eyeing girls in short skirts, and that’s gone. They’re unavailable to you, and in the few cases where you could work your magic, it’s to no practical avail because you can’t plan a future if you’re 70 and she’s 22. So your flirtation life goes, which is a big part of everybody’s enjoyment in life.”

That is really sad. Make that pathetic. It is pathetic that a man could live over 70 years on this planet and that paragraph is his summation of happiness. When your “flirtation life” is gone a big part of your happiness is gone? I have learned a lot about happiness and love in the past few months. My wife’s battle with breast cancer has redefined beauty and love in a relationship. I wrote a piece called Bald is Beautiful. I regret that Woody Allen apparently has never experienced a relationship like that. But you have to dig a little deeper than “flirtation life” with “short skirts” to get there. Woody Allen could have saved himself a lot of anguish by reading Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.

Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “utterly meaningless!”
What do people get for all their hard work? Generations come and go, but nothing really changes. The sun rises and sets and hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south and north, here and there, twisting back and forth, getting nowhere. The rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows again to the sea. Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

As cool as celebrity and wealth may seem this is where you will ultimately find yourself without a relationship with the Living God. The wise king Soloman agonized for chapter after chapter about the meaning of this existence. And finally he concluded.

Here is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is the duty of every person. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.

And that brings us to the saddest part of Allen’s interview. Allen concludes that his final destination will not be altered by his celebrity. On that point he is exactly right.

• He dislikes looking back, if only because his life seems wispy to him in hindsight and death is a punch line that turns the past and present into cruel farce. “It’s like the two trains at the beginning of my movie ‘Stardust Memories,’ ” he says. “There’s a train with these gorgeous winners on it, and a train with all the losers in it. You want to be on the train with the winners, but five minutes later, you’re pulling into the same depot. My 70-plus years will be spent better than those of a beggar on the streets of Calcutta. But we’ll wind up in the same place.”

That conclusion may or may not be correct. In my belief it will depend on which train the beggar had boarded. Scripture notes that the order of “Stardust Memories” is often reversed. The first shall be last. The “losers” shall be “winners”. The destination may well be different. The difference is Jesus. It seems from his public comments that Woody Allen has rejected religion. He certainly does not seem to have figured out how to fill that void.

 

 

 

I remember seeing trailers a few years ago for a horror movie called “What Lies Beneath”. I am not a fan of that genre of films so I did not see the movie. But for some reason that title popped into my mind as I heard the developing saga of Mel Gibson. I wonder if Mel Gibson fully understood the ugly sin that was lurking beneath until alcohol unleashed the horror of his bigotry and exposed it to the light of scrutiny? I wonder what lies beneath the surface of my tidy little Christian exterior? Is there something hiding deep in my soul that is just as ugly and ungodly? Writer Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News wrote an insightful and soul provoking piece this past weekend entitled “Mel isn’t the only sinner“.  I have excerpted some highlights. My observations are italicized.

I’m deeply concerned about the rise of global anti-Semitism, and found my fellow Christian’s drunken remarks appalling. And as someone who loved The Passion of the Christ and defended it in print and online against accusations of anti-Semitism, I felt intensely embarrassed, even betrayed, by Mr. Gibson’s Jew-bashing rant. When news of his anti-Semitic diatribe broke, I hurried to my Beliefnet.com blog to join in the piling-on.

Mr.Dreher’s honesty is so refreshing. He candidly admits that it started out about him…not Mel Gibson. He (Dreher) had defended Gibson against the critics. He felt embarrassed and betrayed by Gibson. So his first reaction was to do what most of us do. Pick up a rock, go into the windup, and start flinging. What happened next is what all of us need to make this journey work. A friend who loves you enough to slap you up the side of the head with difficult truth.

Later in the day, my oldest friend, J., e-mailed to say he questioned my judgment in light of the upbringing we’d both had in our small town in the Deep South.

Yes, Mel was wrong, said my friend, but consider that he was raised by a Holocaust-denying kook of a father. Could either of us, J. went on, say with complete certainty that the racism we grew up around had been entirely eradicated from our souls? We think we’ve put that all behind us, said J., but is it not possible that under the right conditions, either of us right-thinking Southern white boys could shock ourselves by what came out of our mouths – and our hearts?

He had a point. J. wasn’t excusing what Mel Gibson said, only cautioning me to beware of self-righteousness.

Mr. Gibson, in his second apology after his arrest, pleaded with the Jewish community for help in “understanding where those vicious words came from.” Some dismissed this as psychobabbly posturing, but it’s entirely plausible that on the matter of Jew-hatred, Mel Gibson was truly a stranger to himself until his moment of terrible grace on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Regular readers of these ramblings know that I regularly call for accountability and responsibility among  my fellow followers of Jesus. When you inevitably screw up…admit it. Seek forgiveness. Pursue reconciliation. Repent…turn away from those actions. I remember a quote from Bull Durham…

“A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’ Think about that for a while.”  Nuke LaLoosh

Baseball can be a very complex game but, in its’ essence, that quote is correct. Christianity is much the same. It is complex enough to take a lifetime to mature and develop. But Christianity is, in some ways, a very simple life. You trust Jesus, you follow Jesus, you abide in Jesus. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes there is a storm.

I have figured out that I learn virtually nothing during the good times. I get my faith degrees and doctorates during trials and storms. Mel Gibson hit a storm that revealed himself to the world. And as Mr.Dreher thoughtfully points out, maybe to himself for the first time in its full and ugly totality. Dreher goes on to relate a personal story of racism unawares.

To live in the South is to understand from experience this paradox: It is possible to be both morally upstanding, as a general matter, and a racist. What sustains the paradox is ignorance, an all-too-human blindness to one’s own faults. This lack of self-awareness does not excuse, certainly, but it does explain, and accepting it gives grace the opportunity to do its work of purifying, healing and reconciliation.

True story: About 12 years ago, in my Louisiana hometown, I was writing about a tiny black church that a new, absentee landlord was trying to evict. Appalled white folks had taken up the church’s cause – and a good thing, too, because the impoverished congregation had no one to help them. An older woman leading the charge told me offhandedly that it’s only natural that white citizens would stand up for the little church. “We’ve always been good to our nigras around here,” she said.

You can hardly find a purer expression of white Southern paternalism than that. Part of me recoiled at her words, yet I knew that the lady meant well, and was a good woman. Having been raised in a certain place and time, she would have been genuinely shocked had someone pointed out the racism of her comments.

I chose not to make an issue of it, because she wouldn’t have understood anyway, and besides, she was going to extraordinary lengths to stand up for her poor black neighbors. For their part, the black congregation genuinely appreciated her efforts, though one fellow, noting how the white establishment shut down local black churches during the civil rights era to stop voting-rights organizing, wondered aloud whether white folks would have been so helpful had the landlord been a local businessman instead of an outsider.

In the end, the little church was saved, thanks in large part to people like that white woman. Indeed, it was her belief in the myth of her generation’s innocence that made it possible for her to take up the church’s cause. We have always been good to our nigras, she said, which meant, We are not the kind of people who would stand by and let black people be treated this way.

However blind she was to historical fact and to her own prejudice, that lady did the right thing for the little church because, however naively, she believed in her own capacity for goodness.

Had I reported her unintentionally revealing remark in the newspaper, the entire campaign to save the church would have collapsed in racial acrimony. I wanted the church saved. I didn’t publish her line. So sue me.

I have examined my own upbringing in a small town in Southern Ohio. I left my little town cocoon quite pride of myself because I was not, in my prideful opinion, a bigot. My definition of a bigot was someone who looked down or demeaned blacks. Because I played basketball with black athletes and had black friends I was pridefully blissful about my “openness” and lack of prejudice. But I found that what lies beneath was not so mature. You see, in Chillicothe, Ohio, I had never met and certainly not befriended any gays, Jews, or Hispanics. I was pretty progressive because I had one very good friend who was Catholic. So when I was exposed to the world I realized that bigotry had many heads. It took me awhile to develop a Christlike attitude toward gays. It is so easy to be judgmental when you don’t care enough to love people who are different than you. When you begin to develop a heart for all of God’s lost lambs you simply want them to come into a full and deep relationship with Jesus. And then the Holy Spirit will start shining the spotlight on the dark recesses of sin that lie beneath. This has been a painstaking process for me. As Joni and I go through her cancer journey I see how slow the process is to kill the cancer cells. If the doctors had pumped a year’s worth of chemicals into her all at once to kill the cancer it would have killed my wife. So the healing process is slow, agonizing, and often painful. So is maturing in Christ.

Dreher’s piece continues…

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Wiesenthal Center graciously held out that possibility, writing in an open letter to Mr. Gibson that if he truly repents, “you can be certain that we will welcome you. You will not find a better fan club than the Jewish community warming up to a foe turned friend.”

The episode could be a moment of conversion, too, for all of us high-minded commentators who take comfort in not being like that booze-addled anti-Semite.

Who among us can say for sure what bigotry and crookedness lie hidden away in our own hearts, concealed from ourselves by our wealth, position or pride, awaiting a moment of weakness or stupidity to manifest?

Who among us, having been laid low by our own vanity and meanness, wouldn’t beg for mercy, for redemption, for the opportunity to show the world that there is more to us than our sins and failings?

Everything that rises must converge. Though the Holy Ghost might use this Road to Malibu experience to save Mel Gibson’s soul, we should all hope to be spared a humiliating epiphany like that one, in which our secret sins are revealed to the world.

I know, I know, we’re all Melled out. But after we’ve exhausted the topic of anti-Semitism among the rich and famous, Mel Gibson’s public disgrace is an occasion for reflection on our own humanity. It’s a moment to ponder the prescriptive wisdom in W.H. Auden’s line: “You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.”

Wow. Thank you Mr. Dreher. I pray that the Holy Spirit will softly and tenderly continue to illuminate what lies beneath in my own heart. Paul says it beautifully to the church at Philippi.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.  Phi 2 NIV

It is with fear and trembling that I pray for Mel Gibson. Pray that his heart is chastised and repentant. And I pray that my own heart will not betray my precious Lord with ugly sin that I have allowed to lay unexamined and unexhumed.